Cards (VC Duel)
Other than in the original games of the Valkyria Chronicles franchise, you will not be able to control your characters actively in battles. In Valkyria Duel, all characters come in the form of cards. Collecting and training them, as well as choosing the right ones to fight in battle is the central part of this game, so getting used to handling these cards is rather helpful. Obtaining Character Cards To obtain character cards, you will have to spend either , or Special Tickets. By selecting the Card-button in the upper left corner of the window in your base overview, you will find the Card Conversion Screen. Here you can choose which kind of points you want to spend for which kind of cards and how many of them by browsing through the available tabs and options. After selecting the way of obtaining the cards, a short animation will play and you will get a list (in case you chose to buy more than 1 card at once) of the cards you just got. Character cards that have not yet been in your collection will be marked with a new-tag, and by clicking on any of the names of the characters, you will see the card in detail. Note that you can access the character's profile by double-clicking or holding left-click down without moving on either their names or their cards. 'Card Limit' You have a set limit of 100 cards in your possession at any time. Once you have reached this limit, you will not be able to obtain any more cards until you have either sold some of them or sacrificed them to let one of your other cards gain experience. It is not possible to obtain cards in any other way than visiting the Card Conversion Screen, so there should never be an instance in which you will have more cards than 100 and are thus forced to select some of them right then. Squad Management After the relatively easy process of obtaining cards, managing them is a bit more difficult, but still pretty easy to do. To gain access to the Squad Management Screen, follow the directions of Menu（メニュー）'' → Squad Management Screen''（部隊編成）. This is the overview over your soldiers who will be deployed in battle and how strong your army and characters therein are. 'Card Points Limit' First of all, note that you have a limit of Card Points in your army: The sum of all your active cards must not be higher than this limit to be found on the right hand side of the screen under Cost. To raise this limit, either gain a Rank Up by participating in enough battles to qualify for a promotion, or increase the level of your base. Either way will allow you to have 10 more Card Points in your squad. The bonus is later diminished to 5 Card Points increase. 'The Elements Of Your Squad' Every squad you will face as well as your own one has the same basic structure and possibilities. You can have a maximum of 13 characters in your army, as long as your Card Points Limit has not been violated yet. Before you fill in all of the 13 slots, you should know that not all your selected soldiers will do the same things: There are different positions to be filled in. The Leader= The leader is the single most important role to be fulfilled in your squad, and whoever takes this position will also be displayed as your representative in the Opponent Select Screen. There is of course only one slot out of the 13 which is the leader, so choose yours carefully. First of all, all of your leader's stat points will be counted towards your total strength. He will also be able to form combinations as well as activate his or her personal potential. What makes the leader really stand out however is the ability to give an order. Not all characters are able to do so: Only the ones with a Command Point icon ( ) in the upper left corner of their cards are able to give Orders, and are thus predestined to be a leader. If you place a character with an order in any other place other than the leader spot, they will not make use of this ability, which also means that only one order can be given per side in a battle. |-| The Officers= Right below your leader you will find four more slots to be filled. These are your officers and almost as important as your Leader. The only difference is that they are not able to give orders. However, they also contribute with all of their stat points towards your squad's total strength, they can form combinations (with both your leader and other officers) and activate their personal potential. |-| The Back-Up= By scrolling down some more, you will find the final 8 character slots, which are separated from the above five one for a reason: They follow different rules. First of all, they are neither able to give orders, form combinations or use their potential. Worse, they do not contribute with all of their strength indicated on their card. Depending on which slot of these 8 you assign them to, their strength will differ. You may have noticed that these slots seem to have different descriptions if no cards are placed on them. The reason for this is that each slot only takes the amount of points of one of the 8 stats each character has and counts these towards to squad's total strength. Try to compare the Kanji on the empty slots with the ones of the stats shown in the character's profile to identify which slot uses which stat. What this means is that characters which do not seem all that strong in the overall, but with a lot of points in one specific stat can still contribute a lot to the total strength of the army. 'Assembling Your Squad' With the knowledge of the different roles to be fulfilled in a squad, all that remains is to assign the positions and maximize the strength of your soldiers. To place a card on a specific slot, click on the latter one to bring up all the cards in your possession with the amount of points they would contribute on the slot selected. You can choose different criteria by which to list the cards by selecting one of the options which appear after clicking on the button in the upper right corner. Cards that are already placed on a slot are marked with the set-tag, characters that would exceed the Card Points Limit if chosen now are marked with a warning-tag. If you feel up to the challenge, you can put together your squad from scratch and work on the best solution – or you can let the game give you hand in the form of an auto-fill in: By selecting the second button from the top in the upper right corner (自動編成), you can tell the game to either: #Put together the squad that contains the most valuable of your cards, which will typically have a high amount of points. #Select any number of already set cards to be locked in place, and then proceed with the above method of filling in the rest as best as possible with valuable cards. This way, you can set characters to a specific location and let the game calculate the best solution from there on. However, it is important to say that this auto-fill in feature does not necessarily give you the optimized squad that is possible with your current cards! Sometimes you can still achieve some improvements to the total strength by swapping in different cards and doing some experiments on your own. For example, the game's suggestion might not use all of the cards up to your Card Cost Limit, because it put a valuable card with high costs in your squad, which could be replaced with two or more different cards to not only use the Card Cost Limit more efficiently, but also providing more points accumulated. When using the auto-fill feature, before accepting the proposition you will get a note telling you, what the total strength of the squad will be compared to what it was before the application. This gives you a good first indication of how useful the feature's result would be. Do not forget though, that strength is not all that matters! Sometimes a bit less strength can be made up for by Combinations or Potentials of your Officers or your Leader! Training Your Characters 'Preparations' As in the original games, characters do not gain immediate experience by participating in a battle. To train your troops, you have to have built a Promotion Center first. More important, characters in Valkyria Duel are trained by sacrificing other cards. This means that you should also have a disposable amount of cards you do not intend to use any longer – indeed you will not be able to use them anymore after feeding them to a selected character. Card Synthesis Select your Promotion Center and then click on the second option on the left side: It will bring you to the Card Synthesis Screen. Here, the basic methods are very similar to how you manage your squad in the Squad Management Screen: The character you want to train has to be placed on the single slot in the upper left corner. By clicking on the slot you bring up all of the cards in your possession. After choosing the beneficiary, you have to fill at least one and up to all 12 of the slots below: By clicking on them, you will see all of the cards you have at your disposal which are not part of your selected squad, so there is no danger of accidentally sending one of your squad members to the death. After you have selected all of the cards you want to sacrifice, the amount of money that is required to execute the training is displayed on the right hand side: It is the lower one of the two values; the upper one represents your current total of funds. By clicking on the black button and accepting your choice, you will get a power up animation as well as the results of your training: The amount of experience gained in %, as well as bonuses and new potentials and the like. Do note that sacrificing cards of the same class type or the same character will grant the trained card a bigger experience boost. 'Maximum Level and Raising a Card's Traits' Other than simply leveling up your cards for better stats, Card Synthesis can also be used to improve other features of a card, namely its rank and, if available, its potential and/or order. By sacrificing a card that shares a feature of the card to be trained it will get a chance to raise the respective trait. This means that for a chance of increasing the potential of a card, you have to sacrifice (amongst possible others) a card with the exact same potential. The procedure for leveling up an order is the same but with an identical order. Refer to the following two lists to see what cards share the same potential or the same order. List of shared potentials List of shared orders Conversely, you may use the game's feature's to automatically sort cards that have the same order or potential together. To do this click same potential (同じポテンシャル) or same order (同じオーダー). To increase the rank of a card, it has to have reached its maximum level first. After reaching its maximum level, a card can no longer gain experience, but you can still improve its potential and order. However, by synching the card with an identical card it will get a chance of getting a rank up, which is symbolized by a small star below its class symbol if the rank up was successful. A card can have two rank ups (thus getting two stars), with each rank up not only increasing its stats, but also raising its maximum level by 5, giving it even more space to evolve, but also leading to higher costs when being leveled. However, a card that ranked up will drop to level 0 of the new rank. The following table shows the a card's maximum level depending on how many rank stars it has. The success rate of leveling up a potential, order or rank is never 100%. 'Effect Of Ranking Up Cards' 'Number Of Cards Needed For Levelling' Data gathered by synthesizing cards that were not common in class, character, and LV0 commons. The info below should be largely accurate. Condensed, this would mean: *To Lv25: Approximately 169 C cards are needed *To Lv30: Approximately 244 C cards are needed *To Lv35: Approximately 335 C cards are needed *To Lv40: Approximately 444 C cards are needed *To Lv45: Approximately 571 C cards are needed 'Using cards that have the same class in synthesis' Experience gained is 1.1 times more than a normal common card. From the card list data gathered from the open beta version, there are a total of 11 scouts, 10 assaults, 8 lancers, 8 snipers, 7 engineers, 6 armored techs, and 6 fencers. From the above statistics, it would be fair to assume that scouts would be more common than any other class. 'Using identical cards in synthesis' Experience gained is 1.1 times more than a normal common card. As it can be assumed that the card being synthesized will have the exact same class as the base card, the class synthesis bonus applies as well, bringing the total to 1.2 times more than a common card. 'Using UC or R as material in levelling cards ' When an UC card is used, experience given is 1.5 times more compared to a common. When an R card is used, experience given is 2.0 times more compared to a common. 'Special Synching Cards' As rewards for participation in a battle and good results in the local rankings, you will sometimes be rewarded with special character cards only intended for Card Synthesis. They can be easily identified by having an infinity symbol as their cost value as well as being unable to participate in any battle as well as having very low stats. Ellet and Martha will grant a comparatively huge boost of experience to the trained card. Multiple cards of these sacrificed at once will stack. UC Martha(LV15) - Equivalent to 14 common cards in XP boost. R Ellet(LV20) - Equivalent to 33 common cards in XP boost. SR Ellet(LV25) - Equivalent to 48 common cards in XP boost. Hans and Jarde are joker cards that have a change of leveling up any potential. Rodriguez and Ramsey will achieve the same thing for cards with orders: They receive an automatic chance at raising their order. Cordelia is used to give any card that already reached its maximum level and does not have two rank stars yet a chance of ranking up. 'Potentials Explained' Status UP (ステータスUP) HP Scouting (索敵) Speed (移動) Evasion (回避) Attack (攻撃) Accuracy (命中) Healing/Recovery (回復) Defense (防御) Coordination UP (総合アップ) Geography (地形) Killer/Slayer (キラー) Mop-Up (掃討) Level effect breakdown High Occurance, Strengthening (高確率強化) High Occurance, Special (高確率特化) Increase (Excludes Coordination) (上昇) Increase (Coordination) (上昇) Strengthening (Does not apply to Coordination) (増強) Strengthening (Coordination) (増強) Limit Break (Excluding Coordination) 限界突破 Limit Break (Coordination) 限界突破 Pillar (極み) Killer (キラー) Mop-Up (掃討) Annihilator (壊滅) Valkyria (ヴァルキュリア) Event Limited (Unattainable outside of event) Gift of the Holy Night (聖夜の贈り物) Miracle of the Holy Night (聖夜の奇跡) Category:Valkyria Chronicles Duel Category:Valkyria Chronicles Duel Gameplay